Tagged With organiser

Get rid of your bulky key chain and replace it with the KeySmart Key Organizer. It’s great for keeping your keys neatly in place, and it eliminates that embarrassing jingle jangle when you walk. Lifehacker Australia readers can pick up the Keysmart for only $21 AUD , a savings of 27% off the RRP.

Predicting the future is near impossible -- but that doesn‘t stop us all from having a red hot go. Human beings have been predicting the future since the beginning of history and the results range from the hilarious to the downright uncanny.

One thing all future predictions have in common: they‘re rooted in our current understanding of how the world works. It‘s difficult to escape that mindset. We have no idea how technology will evolve, so our ideas are connected to the technology of today.

Clear off your computer desk but still have easy access to pens, CDs, and other supplies with the Keyboard Organizer—a fully-working keyboard that flips up for storage. Haven't typed on one of these myself so I'm not sure what the height is like on this bad boy, but the two-in-one organiser/keyboard action is a nifty idea. The Keyboard Organizer will set you back about 50 bucks (£24.99).

In the course of planning how I'll run my personal organisation system next year, I've had to do some thinking about whether to use an online calendar, or continue to use a paper one. In my job, which involves a lot of travel and external meetings, I need a portable calendar which contains not only my appointments but also the information I need about them (ie who is attending, their contact details, maps or directions for getting there, etc). I also need to be able to make new appointments on the spot - I hate having to say "I'll need to check my diary when I get back to my desk" - so my diary goes with me everywhere.There's no reason why I couldn't use a PDA for this, in fact I've done so before. This gives the benefit of being able to synch information from your desktop computer to your portable one. But to be honest, I return to the paper diary because I prefer to write
notes in my diary to having to synch the PC and PDA, or update a PDA with it's fiddly little keyboard.More recently the ability to share invitations and events via Google Calendar has gotten me using that for planning joint events, so for 2008 I plan to use Google Calendar for joint events, and my Moleskine for planning my personal day to day schedule.So will you be an electronic or paper diary person in 2008? Do you use a blend of both? Share your system in comments please.

Invitastic is a cute little website which lets you create, send and manage invitations to events. It has fairly limited functionality at the moment, but a couple of nice features.

The invitations don't seem to be customisable - mine came as an email on a yellow background, which wouldn't have been my choice. I did like the fact that it embeds a link to Google Maps so your guests can look up a map of where your event is being held.

The site tracks RSVPs for you - you can see who's said yes, no or maybe, and who hasn't responded. For Mac users, it offers the bonus of being able to download the event to your iCal (for you the host as well as your guests - the invitation comes with the event as an .ics (Ical) file.

The date format on the website is the confusing American style (11/20/2007) but the invitations themselves express dates as "November 22, 2007" which is much clearer for non-yankees.

I assume they'll add templates to give some choice about how your invitations look - in the meantime it's a barebones WYSIWYG email invitation service, no more, no less.

UPDATE: Turns out that you can customise how the invitations appear online - I missed the two translucent arrows on either side of the invitation on the invitation creation screen which let you cycle through a range of different backgrounds. The email version always comes with a simple yellow background to avoid image display problems in email. Thanks to Hillel from Jackson Fish Market (the people behind Invitastic) for getting in touch to clear that up!

The next version of the BlackBerry OS (expected later this month) will deliver video and voice recording features, according to a piece in APC mag. The updates affect the 8100 Pearl and the 8300 Curve.

"OS 4.3.1 update lets the Curve record video onto a MiniSD card, with the Curve's digital camera flash toggled on to act as a bright light during the video recording session. The device's multimedia menu option also gains a new Voice Notes feature for recording random (or highly organised) thoughts.

Writer David Flynn says the Pearl misses out on video recording but gets voice recording.

In the old days, a music collection was a pile of records or CDs (or tapes, or 8 tracks, depending on how far you want to go back!). I look back to those old days with some envy when I think about the the four different computers my household's music is spread across. Consolidating all the digital music into one shared drive is going to take a while - and that's not even taking into account all the CDs which should be ripped to really make it One Music Collection to Rule Them All.

"... you may not have the guts to delete this stuff completely, but do yourself a favor and move the files to an external disk. Then put it away, mark down the date, and if a year later you haven’t touched it, delete that thing and use it for porn again like it was meant to be."

It's no wonder the majority of Lifehacker readers voted Remember the Milk the best web-based task manager out there. Remember the Milk's got all the best features modern webapps have to offer: email/SMS/IM integration, tagging, advanced search, keyboard shortcuts and even offline access with Google Gears. Chances are you work across several computers and need a single, always-accessible place to consolidate your work, personal, school, and family to-do's. Remember the Milk is a great way to do just that. Let's take a closer look at Remember the Milk's basic and more advanced features.

Web site Planner Hack details how to turn your pocket-sized Moleskine into a custom weekly planner with an at-a-glance look at your upcoming week. With no shortage of pre-made weekly planners in the world, why would you want to put together a DIY version? There's really just one (albeit very good) reason: You've decided it's time to get your schedule in order, but guess what: It's neither the start of a new year nor the start of a new school year, and since most planners run on these calendars, you're either stuck buying a planner that's only half usable or you just don't buy a planner because it seems like a waste of money at this point. So while this Moleskine planner hack is far from mind-blowing, it's the perfect, cheap interim planner.

The default YouTube video size too small for you but don't want to dedicate all your attention to the hugely pixelated fullscreen interface? With a little URL hacking, you can view a version of the YouTube video that dynamically resizes to fit your browser width. Weblog Digital Inspiration says that all you need to do is grab the YouTube video ID—the string of text following watch?v= and append it to the end of this URL:

It's pretty simple, and it means that you can still view larger YouTube videos without switching to fullscreen and focusing exclusively on the video. The URL hack is simple enough, but 20 Lifehacker brownie points go to first reader who cranks out a bookmarklet or Greasemonkey script to redirect to the browser-width version of the video.